Sin, guilt & stuff.

- Article by B. Myggen
A much debated word is sin.
In Christian circles no one escapes sin, even a minute-old baby needs "saving" from something called original sin - inherited from Adam and Eve.
The word - as I understand it - comes from Roman times and was used in archery. The distance from a perfect bullseye to where the arrow struck the target was the sin. A sin was the measurement of how far away from perfection you had come. There was no shame, no guilt involved with this measurement - other than a bit of personal embarasment if the distance was too great.
The difference between hitting the bullseye and the third ring is in our experience of it. Existence provides us with the bow, the arrow and the time for the task. We aim, we concentrate, and a moment later feel either slightly disappointed or fully alive.

If you sneak onto a train without getting a ticket you also sin. But - different from a traditional faith - I do not believe a Superior Being keeps a scorecard and make you pay later. You pay in your own experience of the train ride. Where you could have enjoyed the views, the speed & conversations with other passengers, you now worry about getting caught. You could say that that God wishes you to not sin, but only because God wants you to have a fabulous experience of life, which comes from doing things right.
Free Will or Fate?
Everyone at some point seem to come to the question of free will. Are we just passengers on a journey where our future is mapped out already, or do we have freedom to change and choose our fate? See what you think in the following parable:
Imagine you are a musician. You are the peccussionist in a symphony orchestra in a major city. You are also a phillosopher and lately you have been contemplating free will. Tonight is the opening of a new series of operas and you a dressing up in your finest clothes.

You take a cab to the opera-house, enter, and meet with collegues, who are all modestly excited about the night. You file into the stage with a full house in attendance and find your place and your instruments.

As you settle in your mind returns to the thought of wether or not you have free will over your life. The music in front of you dictates what you will be doing, when, how loud and for how long. Your first notes call for series of triangle triplets at bar 62 and you think to yourself: To prove to myself I have free will, I could decide to not ring this triangle at bar 62. And you consider the idea more. The price to pay would be a few raised eyebrows, a comment afterwards by the conductor, perhaps, but you would not be fired and life would go on as always.

The conductor arrives. Everyone settles down. He raises his arms and the music begins.

It is Wagner tonight, and the overture swurls and turns as you dutifully count the bars. At bar 40 you pick up the triangle, but you are not sure if you will chime at 62 or not. So much of your life is series of have-to's and must-do's - it would be delicious this once to have your own will to follow. You are now at bar 50.

The music is like a stormy ocean, the waves are building under dark and powerful clouds. At bar 56 a chrescendo reaches up towards the heavens and as the wave crests and breaks into a million particles you are supposed to be ringing your triangle as the music falls into the abyss. Bar 60. Bar 61. Bar 62...

What will you do?

Ask yourself this: What will you do in this story?

Don't read further until you have answered youself.

If you are like most, you will ring.

Why will you ring?

Ask yourself again: Why would you ring?

First of all, if you are a musician, you belong to the music more than to your mind. But more importantly, at bar 62 the world around you cries out for a triangle, and you are the only one in the hall who poseesses such a thing - and even knows how to use it.

Here is what I have found: When I have an opportunity to supply what is truly needed, and what nobody else can provide, there is nothing more satisfying that that. The thought of free will is purely academic if you are in the right place at the right time.

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Another example:

One day I had 3 errands to cover. I wanted to ask my mechanic something, pick up dry cleaning as well as some duplicated CDs of music. I had planned to make the run starting with the CDs, but in the last minute I changed my mind and for no reason took my third destination first. It could have been my imagination, but it seemed to me that traffic was arkward and slow the whole way. When I got to the garage I was told that my mechanic was out to lunch and would be back in 45 minutes. At the dry cleaners the woman reminded me that I had promised her a copy of one of the CDs I intended to pick up first. It was as if my sudden change of plans had reaked havoc in some cosmic planning team. As if someone sitting on a cloud yelled out: "Whoa, hey, lookout - he went the wrong way. Anyone in Goleta we can call?"

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Supposition:

We live in a Biological Matrix and when we are in harmony with ourselves we experience an ease with which all things flow: Traffic isn't bad, we find a good parking space, meet helpful people, and so on and so on. When we are out of sync, the alarm fails, we get a flat tire, people are late to see us, etc. etc. and the more we try to forcefully put things right the harder it gets. I don't know how it works, but this seems to be true, that what we think and say has power to create, but when we change our minds it takes a while for the world to catch on. There are moments where it best to have a cup of tea and turn off the cell-phone for 10 minutes and let reality catch up with us. We may simply be ahead of ourselves. Go with the flow, as they say.

Yes you have free will. You can use this to complicate your life or concentrate on finding where existance has a place reserved for just you.
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Darwin, Creation and Evolution
Once I watched a documentary from the Galapagos Islands. A team of scientists had followed the finches knows as Darwin's Finches for 25 years - keeping track of changes in the climate and how the little birds responded in kind.
The team excitedly reported that as less rain had made the ground harder for the birds, the next generation had developed beaks that were shorter and stronger. Conversely, with wet seasons came the need to dig deeper into the mud and birds then developed longer beaks.

This, it was proclaimed, proved Darwin's theses of Survival of the Fittest once again. I sat in my chair and thought, no it doesn't. One generation? Perhaps after 20 or 50 generations the birds best suited for the new environment would have established their dominance, but it did not seem to me one generation would be enough.

What would cause such as quick response?

Again the thought of an Intelligent Biological Matrix comes to mind. Here is what it seems like to me:

If we are, as we say, all connected - then we are connected not just in a way that if we kill the whales, then the plancton will take over the seas and the world's oxygen supply will be cut by one third and we'll die. That may be true and so we are connected to the whales by our actions or lack thereof. This we could call a connection over time. But in each moment we are also connected through our subconscious to all that exists. We are the cells and souls of the superbeing some of us call God, and this in turn connects each of us to all knowledge and creation. Thus the DNA of the birds are connected to the climate cycles of the island they inhabit. All of the living universe is intelligent, and just like cells in our bodies die and are replaced with other cells as we keep on living, so do we die and our children replace us - individual by individual - in the evolution of our species.

Our collective mind and soul goes on forver.

Survival of the Species is part of the puzzle, but random genetic accidents of nature takes too long and is does not provide a reasonable explanation for the fine nuances of biological life. How did the Earth maintain the same mixture of Oxygen over the last million years? How does the oceans maintain the same saltcontent even though storm after storm wash minerals into the rivers. The sun has also become hotter over the last million years and seemingly unrelated factors has appeared along the way - shielding us from this heat.

Some say the planet has it's own intelligence.

As human beings we have the choice to tap into the "network of life" or not. The subconscious is there for all to utilize and connect with all of physical and spiritual life, but not all of us are comfortable with that. Some of us choose to separate from this web and seek proof that it does not exist, or that it is evil and must be suppressed. If we insist, we can break that connection and live our lives in isolation. When it happens in our bodies that cells disconnect from the larger organism we usually experience it as disease.

To sum up my personal belief about evolution, I think that:

Evolution is not a result of random accidents leading to better models, rather a collective intelligence, which emerged over time as life itself evolved.


Q: Do I think God had a hand in this?
A: We are all God's fingers.